CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

104 CAPITALISM’S ACHILLES HEEL
its final delivery. Criminal syndicates usually take over in the destination
country to force victims into prostitution or to collect smuggling fees. And
then money laundering assures that every link in the chain is well rewarded
for its portion of the enterprise.
In the U.S. State Department’s estimate of 600,000 to 800,000 people
trafficked across borders annually, 70 to 80 percent are females and at least a
third of them are underage. An estimated 70 percent of all trafficked females
end up being sexually exploited in conditions that deny them freedom. Other
groups studying human trafficking estimate even higher annual numbers. 107
Little girls and young women are bought cheap, reportedly in Nepal for
$4, in West Africa for $14, in Central America for $25. Delivered to a
brothel owner, a Malaysian reportedly might cost $5,000, a Thai $14,000, a
blonde Russian “Natasha” perhaps $20,000. Criminal syndicates investing
in human inventories expect to get high returns.
Out of Africa come an estimated 50,000 trafficking victims a year.
Central American and Caribbean women have been found in the sex
trade in France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal,
Greece, and elsewhere. Mexican women are a favorite in Japan. Reportedly
75,000 Brazilian women are in forced prostitution in European
Union countries. Women from Colombia are trafficked along drug paths
leading all over the world.
Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union may be the largest
sources of human trafficking, estimated in the hundreds of thousands annually.
The collapse of the USSR led to the “feminization of poverty” and has produced
a massive outflow of women. 108 Most countries of South and Southeast
Asia are supplying women to Japan and the Middle East. The CIA has estimated
that some 50,000 women are trafficked for sexual exploitation into the
United States annually, with source countries including Thailand, Vietnam,
Malaysia, China, South Korea, the Philippines, Russia, Ukraine, Czech Republic,
Poland, Hungary, Latvia, and most countries in the Western Hemisphere.
Drugs, girls, and guns are the stock in trade for a good part of global
crime. Add to these the further panoply of counterfeiting, contraband,
fraud, environmental damage, and international theft, secure all with powerful
state sponsors and large multinational criminal syndicates, and the picture
of this planetary menace begins to take shape.
Government sponsors or endorsers of overt criminal activity in recent
years have included Russia, China, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan,